But what if you can't shell out, say, more than $1000 for a professional web design? With an ever-increasing number of online contest-based crowdsourcing platforms, you won’t have to worry. You can sign up and you’ll get the best web designs for your business, at a price that fits your budget.

Google and other major search engines index RSS feeds quickly, which eventually help you boost your search engine ranking. In addition, RSS feeds are cached quickly and this further boosts your search engine ranking. You can optimize RSS feeds for search engines to increase web traffic to your website.

Substitute any dropdown or flyout navigation requiring JavaScript or other complex programming with a simple CSS substitution

Remember, classic HTML/CSS links remain your best bet when it comes to ensuring a delightful browsing experience for visitors.

Don’t Shy Away from User Comments and Feedback

It pays to listen to what your readers have to say about you. Remember, comments and feedback are the most productive form of user-generated content. Here are two major points on how comments add value to your SEO:

Better user interaction boosts the performance of your site on search engines result pages

Conduct a Speed Check

If your blog’s load time is higher than usual, your visitors may change their minds and exit your page. Remember, you’re just one click away from oblivion. So, make sure you have an optimal web page load time.

This not only helps you improve user experience, it also gives an automatic boost to your site on the SERPs.

Don’t Forget Breadcrumbs

If you thought breadcrumbs weren’t that important for your blog, it's time to think again! Breadcrumbs perform several essential functions to ensure the usefulness and appeal of your site. Here’s a list of three such functions:

Increase the indexation of and crawling within your blog

Help users navigate more easily

Help search engines easily categorize content on the basis of topics

Explore the Potential of the Search Box

With Google’s big search box and auto-fill element, netizens are now so used to this excellent feature they can’t imagine a site without a proper search box in place! Therefore, it's important your site contains a search box that works well with your blog section too.

While it effectively provides a better user experience, it also helps you determine what keywords are searched, how users are searching your site and what is ranking in terms of popularity among your users.

In case you’re confused on how to find that perfect search box functionality, don’t worry; almost all blogging platforms come pre-equipped with search box functionality.

Keep an Eye on Your Ad Space

In a survey and correlating data released by Moz, the researchers discovered there was a negative correlation between rankings and Google AdSense metrics; a considerably large number of websites had a large number of ads above the fold. Not to mention, these sites were hit by the recent-at-the-time Google algorithm update.

Having ads on your blog is one of the best ways to monetize your blog content. But it makes sense to not let ads dominate your content in terms of placement or raw pixel area. Remember, your company blog is your chance to create that desired first impression among visitors; don’t ruin that first impression with unnecessary cluttering of ads on your site.

Pick RightGraphics/Images

With so many websites and blogs out there, you’ve got to battle it out for the user’s attention. For that, you need unique images or graphics to evoke the right kind of emotion. This is where images and graphics come to your rescue.

You may argue that finding such relevant, unique and interesting images or graphics is not so easy. Thanks to online crowdsourcing platforms and free image hosting sites, it is easier than ever.

No matter where you source your images from, never forget to play by the rules. That means posting only legal and visually appealing graphics or images. Additionally, make sure your images or graphics contain alt text for better SEO.

Avoid Too Many Links

There’s no doubt that links are essential components of an effective blog. However, too many links can dilute link juice and may cause crawling issues.

How can you ascertain the "right" number of links for effective SEO? Matt Cutts reveals in one of his blogs that it makes sense to keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number.

Remember, users don’t like link-heavy websites or blogs. So don’t add too many links on your blog in order to ensure your blog works well for your users.

Conclusion

Your blog should be a positive extension of your company. Play by these vital SEO rules, and you will be able to successfully optimize your blog and user experience.

David is a graphic designer who works with amerisleep, top5hosting and many more ! He has published several articles, blogs and columns on topics related to graphic design, social media, startups, SEO techniques and e-commerce.

All great advice, Arthesh. While the relative importance and SEO value of blogs is currently in dispute in the digital marketing world (what, pray tell, isn't), I am a firm believer that well developed content focused on UX will never go out of style.

Like so many other significant aspects of a digital marketing strategy, it just has to be part of a thematic whole. Tying it all together is the true challenge, but when you are able to pull it off it's like fireworks going off on the 4th of July.